Make a Dinosaur Garden

Such beautiful animation, and lots of funny moments as well as some sad, thoughtful parts. It was perfect for a family movie night.

After the movie the kids and I chatted about what life would be like if dinosaurs never became extinct. Would we be dinosaurs sitting on the couch watching a movie about people? Or would dinosaurs have evolved alongside humans, so your best friend might be a T-rex!

The idea really stuck with my five year old, and he couldn’t stop talking about it, so we decided to make our own ‘Dino World’ to play with.

Here’s what we used to make our dinosaur garden:

A large shallow container

Dirt/potting mix

Aluminium foil

Small plants – ferns, grass, succulents etc.

Rocks and small pebbles

Small sticks or other natural materials

Printable Dinosaurs (see below)

A small digging implement – we used a spoon.

We used a large plastic tray for our dinosaur garden, but you could use any large, shallow, container. It just needs to hold enough soil for the plants.

We bought a variety of small plants from the nursery – tiny pots of mondo grass, some tiny ferns, a succulent (because succulents are cool!), and we used some lawn we’d planted for another project. Make sure your plants are small enough to be planted in the shallow tray of soil.

We found a few stones and other natural materials around the house and we also bought a bag of little pebbles from our local dollar store.

Making the dinosaur garden is messy. It would be best to do it outside if you can, but it was too wet and windy here, so we covered our table with paper and I just ignored the dirt on the floor till later!

Start by filling your container with dirt, don’t fill it too full as you don’t want it to spill over the sides when you play.

We decided we needed to have a river, just like in the movie, so we dug out a path across the centre and used a folded piece of foil to form the river.

Once you’ve got the river where you want it, gently take it out and set it aside while you plant the plants otherwise it fill up with dirt.

Next decide where you want your plants to go, and plant them!

Add the foil back in and arrange rocks, pebbles, and other natural materials along the edge of the ‘river’ to keep it in place.

Now you can add the water, and you are ready to play!

While Spot fitted perfectly in our dinosaur garden, our Good Dinosaur dinos were a bit big, so we made our own 3D paper dinosaurs instead.

We laminated the individual body and leg pieces before we slotted them together to make them a bit sturdier.

These printables are A4 sized pdf files, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open them. If you are printing on US ‘letter sized’ paper be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options.

Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.

Win a Disney Pixar DVD Pack

This competition is now closed. Congratulations to the winners – Lucy, Linda, Deb, Charlotte and Hannah (please make sure to reply to my email or get in touch within five days).

To celebrate the launch of The Good Dinosaur on DVD I have fabulous Disney Pixar DVD prize pack to give away.

To enter simply leave a comment on this post answering this question:What do you think would happen if dinosaurs never became extinct?

The five most creative, funny or interesting answers will be judged the winner.

You must be an Australian resident to enter, and entries close June 1st 2016. See full terms and conditions below.

Competition Terms and Conditions.
You must be an Australian resident and have an Australian postal address to enter.
You must be 18 + years of age to enter.
You must provide a valid email address and entries are limited to one per household.
Entries close June 1 2016 11:59am Australian EST.
Entries will be judged on merit and creativity.
Five winners with each receive one The Good Dinosaur Blu-ray Digital HD pack. Prize may differ from pictured.
Winners will be contacted by email and announced on this post by Monday June 6th
The winner must contact me within 5 days or the prize will be re-drawn.
The winner agrees to have their contact details passed on to the appropriate PR company or brand representative who will send out/organise the prizes directly.

Read the comments or scroll down to add your own:

Debsays

Love the use of real plants in your dino world! So fun.
I asked mr 4 what he thought would happen if dinosaurs never became extinct and he said, “It’d be really cool ‘coz we could have smaller ones as pets but we’d probably stay away from bigger fiercer ones, like T-Rex’s because they’d probably eat us and our pet nice dinosaurs. They could keep us safe from sharks and lions though.”

Linda Wallacesays

IF DINOSAURS NEVER BECAME EXTINCT IM SURE ID HAVE A BACKYARD FULL OF EM.KIDS BRING HOME ALL THE STRAYS.

Hannah bakersays

I can guarantee my son would want his own triceratops to ride to and from school! Which would save me on being the school and party taxi! Oh I wish they weren’t extinct now!

Love this activity, the dinosaur garden looks like great fun to make and your printables are adorable!

Kyliesays

Humans would probably hunt and profit from it all

Chontsays

I think we humans may have trouble getting accidentally squished! Hopefully we wouldn’t be considered pests because we’d look like ants compared to dinosaurs.

christinasays

All humans would be crushed to death and not many trees left for them to feed on

Scottsays

No need for the wheel to be invented, people riding Dinosaurs everywhere. HUGE padded saddles ofcourse so none of the horns on their backs could make you feel a little prickly down there!
BIG difference in the world for sure, maybe even no planes. Just hop on a pterodactyl and get to
the Sunshine Coast FAST for your holidays!

Jade Osays

Dinosaurs would have taken over as humans, creating their own world and humans would be kept as ant – for the dinosaurs enjoyment. What a world it would be!

Lucy Lowsays

I will be really fit and healthy chasing my 5 year old grandson riding and jumping from one dinosaur to another and loving the day!

My daughter loves Ice Age 4 so much. Surprisingly, she really likes Rudy, the dinosaur. This gonna be an amazing surprise gift for her coming birthday.
Thank for sharing!!

Charlotte L.says

Dinosaur steak may be on the menu,
In winter we’d make a big hearty stew,
Small dinosaurs could be household pets,
So many kids would be excited I bet!

Danielle Philpottsays

Just like so many other species they would have evolved to become something else or they would have died out another way as always you can change the way you arrive to your destination but no matter how it happens you can’t out run destiny.

Emilysays

Playgrounds would be much more fun with dinosaurs around! You could carefully climb over the back and through the plates of a Stegosaurus, hold on tight while see-sawing on the neck of a Triceratops, get a “flying fox” ride courtesy of a Pterodactyl, and squeal when sliding down the neck of a Brontosaurus!

Deborah Bolamsays

The kids just told me they would keep the dinosaurs in the paddock and put in the hen house of a night assured me they would feed water and exercise the dinosaurs yeah right like the dog they were supposed to look after